Monday, March 23, 2015

The water in the birdbath had all but evaporated in the blazing
August sun. I turned on the faucet and filled
the concrete basin once the waters drawn up from the aquifer ran cool.

They must have been waiting at the edge of the woods,
waiting for me to fulfill their need because they came, one by one. Drawn by the sound of the spray. A chickadee, then another, a nuthatch, a
towhee, a raven.

Soon birds were everywhere, unruffled by my presence. They perched on me, the bushes, the
bench. Waiting for their turn to splash,
bathe, and drink.

Monday, March 16, 2015

The ocean. Why did
she always return? Was it the fresh air,
the lull of the waves, the feel of sand beneath her feet?

No. It was the
endless horizon and the bottomless depth.
In a carefully scripted, planned life, she, on some level, relished the theory,
the thought, the vision of a vast unknown.

What lay beyond the edge, beneath this deep? The wondering fueled her imagination, her
dreams. If fed her desire to do more,
see more, get out from behind this life and discover what lay beyond her limitless
horizons, beneath the surface waves, into the deep.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

They
circled, fluttering their darkened eyelashes, flipping their spicy smelling hair,
stretching their painted lips into smiles over hungry white teeth. They were looking for something, someone, to
eat. They were starving, he could
tell. Starving for affection or
attention or one night of warmth.

They swarmed around different men, sampling, tasting, trying
all until each honed in on the one that fit their needs.

But never him.

They didn’t even seem to notice him. He sat at the bar, alone. A mere observer of this nightly biological phenomenon.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Gertie snipped a cluster and put them into the basket of the
ancient Schwinn. She’d found the last
item on her list and could head home where Granny waited. Granddad had the shingles again and these berries were needed to make a poultice to treat the fierce boils.

Granny was half Chinook Indian. Her only medicines came from the forests and
the sea. Her only foods, grown or
gathered by her own two hands.

Ninety-seven years, give or take a few, were proof that the old ways worked.